Announcing Pegasus Frontend

fluffypillow

Weekly recap:

added support for calling scripts before and after launching a game
added support for suffix-less video file assets
the Flixnet theme can now use box art images

Other than that, I was tidying up the source code; this should make it easier to read, extend and test it in the future.

dudleydes

@fluffypillow After spending the past week looking at using the Linux Joystick Mapper program (loadmap) with the Pegasus Frontend, I don't believe it will work seamlessly as I would've hoped. After running a rom and exiting back to Pegasus, if I then try to exit Pegasus, then Pegasus reloads and I cannot use my PS3 controller. I can usually exit Pegasus with a keyboard and in the console, there will be the following messages relating to the earlier attempt to exit Pegasus:

evdevmouse: Could not read from input device (No such device)
Gamepad: Could not read from input device (No such device)
evdevkeyboard: Could not read from input device (No such device)
evdevkeyboard: Failed to query led states

This is an issue for users who share their PS3 controller between their Pi and their console or other device(s). With the Linux Joystick Mapper program, it's not possible to unplug the controller from the Pi and then replug it and expect it to work. The loadmap process must be killed and restarted for the controller to work in Pegasus. What I have been doing is to have a script to kill loadmap in the quit scripts folder so that I can exit Pegasus and then am free to unplug my controller.

I'm thinking using xboxdrv is a better solution and then maybe create a udev rule to force Pegasus to use js1 while xboxdrv is running. Having looked through some documentation, I really have no idea how to get started.

fluffypillow

@dudleydes I think I can get a PS3 controller for testing this weekend. I have a few ideas to improve the gamepad handling, I'll see if I can solve this problem. Ideally Pegasus should work without any udev hacks.

After running a rom and exiting back to Pegasus, if I then try to exit Pegasus, then Pegasus reloads

You mean, you press Quit, and instead of quitting, Pegasus restarts? How did that happen? :) Or you mean after Pegasus reloads, you cannot quit, because you can't use the PS3 controller?

Darksavior

@fluffypillow hopefully analog can work as well.

AkiAfroo

i still dont know how to run pegasus on windows. (when launch show me black screen) what i could read is because need a setup file or i have to indicate where to look. (thats the problem i have.)

i have my emulationstation full configure any tips where/how start. ?

thanks in advance.

dudleydes

@fluffypillow In the hope that you may be able to replicate the issue of Pegasus reloading when I select to Exit Pegasus from the Quit menu, here is my set-up.

I have a PS3 controller connected by USB and a Rii mini wireless keyboard plugged into the pi.

I have built the Linux Joystick Mapper binary and placed it in the /home/pi/joymap/ folder for testing purposes. In the same folder, I have the mapper file, pegasus.map.

In the folder home/pi/.config/pegasus-frontend/scripts, I have placed a kill-joymap.sh script in the game-start and quit folders and start-joymap.sh in the game-start folder.

You can find copies of all of these files at my gist.

To replicate the issue, I launch a rom and then exit back to Pegasus. From the Quit menu in Pegasus, I choose to Exit Pegasus. The console will briefly appear before Pegasus restarts. I have included a copy of lastrun.log when this happens in the gist.

My thinking is that the line Gamepad: Could not read from input device (No such device) in the lastrun.log suggests that, for some reason, the PS3 controller is not available. Because of this, the Linux Joystick Mapper program fails to run and the PS3 controller can't be used in Pegasus after it has restarted.

fluffypillow

@AkiAfroo Pegasus looks for the ES2 directory .emulationstation in you home dir, C:/Documents and Settings/Username/ on Windows. You can override the home dir by defining the environmental variable PEGASUS_HOME before launching Pegasus (HOME is also supported). The easiest way to do that is to create a .bat file, eg. launch.bat with the following content:

set PEGASUS_HOME=C:/some/directory
pegasus-fe.exe

and start Pegasus using this script. The directory you set PEGASUS_HOME to should contain the .emulationstation folder. You can use whatever editor you like for creating the file (Notepad should be fine too).

@dudleydes Thanks for the detailed report! It seems the exit issue is caused by your start-joymap.sh, where you launch a new instance of Pegasus. When you exit from that, it is when your script actually ends, and thus the original Pegasus is restored.

dudleydes

@fluffypillow Thanks for the reply. I can see the logic now and how the start-joymap.sh script would be starting a new instance of Pegasus each time I exited a rom. Not the most efficient way of doing things!

I searched online how to run commands in the background and found that removing the command to launch Pegasus in start-joymap.sh but leaving the ampersand should work. I have tested this and it seems to work fine.

AkiAfroo

@fluffypillow thanks i will try as soon as..

fluffypillow

@dudleydes I was just playing around with multiple PS3 controllers, and noticed that you can run xboxdrv in daemon mode, which should solve the reconnection issues. I've launched it like this:

sudo xboxdrv --detach-kernel-driver --mimic-xpad -s --next-controller -D --dbus disable

There was a bug in xboxdrv where unplugged controllers didn't un-register themselves, but that was fixed in version 0.8.6. You might want to try that if you have troubles.
Also you can see a bunch of debug information if you set the env var QT_LOGGING_RULES="qt.gamepad=true" before launching Pegasus.

dudleydes

@fluffypillow Thanks for this. I shall take a look at it.

The issue regards xboxdrv wasn't unplugging and replugging the PS3 controller. It was more that it couldn't be used in Pegasus and in emulators. A possibility would be to reconfigure the controller running with xboxdrv but I have spent a lot of time configuring my PS3 controller, often for individual games such as DOS games, so I'd rather not go through that again.

I have the Linux Joystick Mapper program working as I would like now. I can exit Pegasus to the CLI without it restarting and I have placed a copy of my original start-joymap.sh script in the home folder, renaming it start-pegasus.shso that I can launch Pegasus with the mapper program from the command line, much in the way ES2 is launched by running the command emulationstation. I have done further testing in launching games that require xboxdrv or the Linux Joystick Mapper and everything is working fine with no conflicts.

xboxdrv is probably the better solution as it can already be installed from the RetroPie script (incidently it's version 0.8.8 that is installed). It's just a case of being able to use the PS3 controller with xboxdrv in Pegasus and the default configurations in the emulators. If you find a solution then let me know. I'd be happy to test and, if successful, demonstrate to interested users how to set up the Pegasus frontend.

tronkyfran

@fluffypillow Ive got a question about a possible functionality of this frontend:
Ive had to leave on standby one new theme because of the daunting task of converting so many scraped images(Game covers) into a different perspective. The fact is that if I had something like a "cornerpin" function and an add Mode for mixing images it would be really easy and people could use their scraped images. I know Im maybe asking for too much, thx for your work.

fluffypillow

@tronkyfran you can rotate every UI element by all three axes ("3D-like"), around a custom point, and you can scale horizontally and vertically. You can also write custom OpenGL shaders, which would allow you to do pretty much anything with a picture.

tronkyfran

Every UI element means vídeo preview box is included? If thats right them I just would need to test if the raspberry gives enough performance to run my theme, awesome!!!

fluffypillow

@tronkyfran yup, including the video. You can also animate these properties, making things spinning or moving things around the screen. Or make people feel dizzy :)

lilbud

@tronkyfran said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

enough performance to run my theme

Wait, are you making a theme for Pegasus? how?

fluffypillow

Got the analog navigation working, I'll clean up the code a bit tomorrow then merge it.

tronkyfran

@lilbud Well, not exactly "making", I have a lot of assets for an emulationstation theme, but it implied to make a lot of custom game art for it and I simply dont have the time right now. But if I can reuse the scraped art somehow....thats a different thing. The fact is that I have now to take a look to the theming process here in pegasus and how to adapt the assets, so I have a long way to go yet, but at least there is a possibility for my idea to come true :D
This were some sketches of it: I would need to reproject cart art and video preview, and suppose I will have to let go the depth of field blur and some other things. Took a look to opengl shading and it should help a lot... :D
alt text

fluffypillow

@tronkyfran Nice! Yes, it'd be possible to create such a theme, but yeah getting the cart art right might be slightly difficult (but not impossible). There's a bunch of built-in shaders as well, so for just blurring you won't need to write them manually. Here's a list of available graphical effects.

fluffypillow

Weekly changelog:

Pegasus can now be controlled with more than one gamepad (in case you had problems before; also this item would need some testing)
added gamepad analog stick navigation support
the list of languages is no longer hardcoded
minor changes due to cleaning up the code